The significant need for improved therapeutics promoting fracture healing and bone regeneration has led to the introduction and rapid expansion of biomimetic materials in medicine and dentistry (Deschaseaux et al., 2010; Jha et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2015; Vo et al., 2015; Quinlan et al., 2015; Suliman et al., 2015; Do et al., 2015). One such advancement is the introduction of growth factors or morphogens, such as bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) (Canalis et al., 1988; Seo et al., 2015; Quinlan et al., 2015; Karfeld-Sulzer at al., 2015; Atluir et al., 2015). BMP-2 delivered as a human recombinant protein on an absorbable collagen sponge (INFUSE® Bone Graft, Medtronic Spinal and Biologics, Memphis, Tenn.) was shown to be effective in the treatment of patients with degenerative disc disease, bone fractures, as well as oral and maxillofacial osseous defects (Boyne et al., 2005: Khan et al., 2004). However, there are a number of drawbacks to using recombinant BMP-2 for both approved and off-label indications (Cancedda et al., 2007; Woo et al., 2012). In spite of its efficacy, the high cost associated with recombinant protein therapy, as well as the supraphysiological dosage required to compensate for the short half-lives of these proteins in vivo (Tannoury et al., 2014), raises serious concerns and strongly underscore the need for alternative approaches. One promising alternative is gene therapy based therapeutics. Gene therapies performed using viral vectors have demonstrated successful delivery of single or multiple transgenes for effective bone regeneration (Evans, 2010; Evans et al., 2012). Non-viral gene delivery vectors are relatively safe compared to viral vectors but have lower transfection efficiencies (Elangovan et al., 2010; Elangovan et al., 2014). The safety concerns and low transfection efficiencies associated with viral and non-viral gene therapies, respectively, are potential barriers for their clinical translation. Therefore, there is a great demand to develop regenerative strategies that are safe, cost-effective and that could potentially overcome the barriers associated with current protein and DNA based approaches.